Embodiments described herein relate generally to power management, and, in particular, to a methods and apparatus for power management associated with a switch fabric.
As switch fabrics and/or devices associated with these switch fabrics have been scaled to meet the growing demand for network capacity to service, for example, high-bandwidth applications such as streaming media (e.g., music, video) and telephony applications, power consumption of the switch fabrics and/or interconnected devices associated with the switch fabrics have become a concern. For example, known devices associated with switch fabrics consume constant and relatively large quantities of energy because these known devices are configured to remain fully active regardless of the level of network traffic flowing through them. Some known devices, for example, have been configured to reduce their power consumption through concentrated processing on selected devices and/or through reduced clock rates at low traffic times. But a decrease in clock rate and/or shifting of workload to selected devices can result in undesirable network congestion. In addition, desirable power savings are not achieved during normal and peak traffic time periods, which can be unpredictable.
Thus, a need exists for methods and apparatus related to power management associated with a switch fabric to address the shortfalls of existing power management technology.